Lyft

Lyft executives told customers in an email this week that they should be “part of the solution” to the issue of “systemic racism” in the United States. Lyft also announced that it will offer $500,000 in free rides to civil rights organizations that are providing transportation to protest events.

In days past, if you were risking your life for low pay, that likely meant you were a soldier. The upside: survival skills, high status, a free college degree, and good benefits. These days, though, you can risk your life for low pay and get none of those benefits, as a member of the pandemic “Gig Economy.”

According to Uber’s fourth-quarter earnings released on Thursday, the company lost $1.1 billion for the three-month period but expects to be profitable by the end of 2020. Overall, the ridesharing company lost $8.5 billion in 2019.

Ride-sharing company Lyft is reportedly putting together a council of experts to advise the company on various safety initiatives for passengers. The “Safety Advisory Council” is being formed in response to many problems between drivers and passengers, including the rape and sexual assault of women — 14 rape victims have sued Lyft claiming their drivers sexually assaulted them.

Ride-sharing giant Uber and courier service Postmates have filed a lawsuit aimed at putting the brakes on California’s new law that will reclassify gig workers as employees, potentially burdening tech companies with millions of dollars in new personnel costs.

In a display of unapologetic defiance, Silicon Valley giants including Facebook and Uber are planning to ignore new California laws scheduled to take effect in 2020, laying the groundwork for a collision course between the tech giants and state lawmakers.

The attorney general of Washington, D.C. has just delivered a lawsuit to DoorDash, alleging that the popular food-delivery company skimmed tips from its drivers and misled customers into thinking that their gratuities would end up in drivers’ pockets.

Uber has been ordered to pay close to $650 million in employment taxes in New Jersey after the state’s department of labor said the ride-sharing company misclassified its drivers as independent contractors, according to a Bloomberg report.

Shares of Uber Technologies Inc. plummeted in after-hours trading Monday and into Tuesday after the ridesharing company reported that it lost a whopping $1.16 billion in the third quarter, exceeding losses from the same quarter last year by 18 percent.

Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash have unveiled a new ballot measure intended to fight the recently passed California law that will re-classify gig economy workers as employees, potentially devastating their business models which rely on armies of drivers who are treated as contract workers.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has signed a controversial bill into law that would reclassify gig workers as employees, potentially disrupting the way numerous Silicon Valley companies including Uber and Lyft do business.

Uber struck a defiant note Wednesday, saying that it won’t reclassify drivers as employees despite a California law expected to take effect in January that would dramatically change the status of gig workers in the state. According to the company, drivers fall “outside the usual course of Uber’s business.”

The newspaper industry lobbied for, and won, a one-year delay for newspaper delivery drivers in a new California bill on the “gig economy” that makes businesses classify workers as employees rather than independent contractors.

Uber has proposed to pay its drivers a new hourly minimum wage of $21, but a union affiliate representing the company’s drivers remains critical, as the proposed hourly wage would only apply while drivers actually have passengers in the car or are in route to pick someone up. The proposal is to counter a California bill classifying drivers as employees instead of independent contractors — which analysts believe could bankrupt rideshare companies.

Students at UC Berkeley have taken responsibility into their own hands by creating a course focused on being a grown-up. The course, entitled, “Adulting,” will focus on improving practical life skills, such as resume building, and completing tax returns.

A recent investigation by automotive website Jalopnik claims that Uber and Lyft are not paying drivers as much as they claim to. After studying nearly 15,000 fares submitted by drivers, the rideshare companies were pocketing between 8.5 and 10.6 percent more of revenues than they claim.

Ride-sharing service Uber posted poor quarterly results this week, with the Company’s losses in the second quarter alone being larger than the 2018 annual losses for all but three companies in the S&P 500.